Hollow
by Renegade Seraph
Summary: A product of the Esthar Cybernetics Corporation, Squall's body has been modified into an instrument of destruction. Rinoa is the opponent of everything he is. Can they find solace in one another when there is no one else to depend on? AU SQUINOA
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** Before I begin there is a few 'thank yous' I would like to say. Firstly to my friend and fellow Squinoa author **Dark Raion**, for letting me adopt this story from her. This first chapter is a mixture of both Raion's writing and mine. I hope that I will do her justice this, and that she doesn't mind that I re-wrote things and cut and pasted the hell out of this chapter!

Also a big thank you to **Carie Valentine** for Beta reading this, and offering so many helpful prompts and corrections.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own FF8.

**Chapter 1 'Beginnings'**

The building stood, a misshapen monster cloaked in the black of night before him. Weeds tumbled like leafy waterfalls from the cracks in the sides and the stone had long since begun to crumble away beneath the passage of years. Still puddles of water and mildew gave the scent of decaying civilization, the only notion that such a withered place like this could ever stand for. The air took on a gray tinge as if storm clouds had drifted towards the ground. Without the unkempt weeds and grass the scene could have been viewed in black and white and it would have made no difference. If a building could die then this was rotting.

He wasted not a single second rushing through the jagged doorframe formed by torn and twisted steel and found himself face to face with a ten-foot wall. Only a hole too small for him to fit through presented itself as a doorway; the old one now blocked off by bent, rusted pipes. No, it would take much too long to clear it away. Instead he backed up a few paces and launched himself forward, leaping straight up the wall as no normal human could ever do. His booted foot made brief contact with the wall near the top, propelling him over. He landed with crushing force; the concrete beneath him cracking with a loud, terrible echo.

It was then that he heard it, a muffled whimpering near the back. He moved toward it with swift caution, weary of hidden traps or surprises as he guided himself over fallen two-by-fours and other debris with utmost precision, as though the nearly complete darkness was not at all different to him than broad daylight.

His ears picked up the slightest movements made, and he could tell it was no imposing enemy he faced. No, it was small and helpless. He rounded the wall it had chosen to hide behind, that it was now cowering against, unknowingly giving off faint and high-pitched squeaks like that of an animal trapped in the bowels of blood-freezing fright.

It, a child, forced his eyes open and stared up at his hunter, wondering not for the first time what terrible things he'd done to be worthy of these kinds of punishments. A child of the street, he'd been pillaging food and scraps of cloth from an alleyway when he'd chanced upon them. They stood just on the other side of a chain link fence that sectioned off an old warehouse, talking amongst themselves in quiet whispers never meant for his ears. A few of them were dressed in long white coats, a few others in business suits. A short distance away, a white van was parked, along with an expensive looking car he didn't know enough about to identify. The words they spoke he didn't really understand, but it was of little consequence. They saw him, turning sharp and unforgiving glares upon him when he accidentally knocked a trash can over.

He had scrambled to get away, hoping they would let him alone but knowing enough of the world not to trust in this hope. He ran for the nearest place, this dilapidated building that he now realized would be his final sanctuary, and it wasn't long into his exodus when he heard the heavy footsteps following behind him.

Looking up at his pursuer, the child shuddered in terror, eyes blurring with tears of a terrible dread that took his heart in any icy iron grip and sought to crush it. He couldn't see much of the man, just bits and pieces illuminated by moonlight pouring in through the cracks. What stood out to him, what turned his bones to lead and his heart to thick sludge with a childish fear of unknown night monsters were the eyes; narrowed in heated rage or hatred, they glowed at him with fierce blue fire, the most sickly blue light imaginable. What was it that chased him here? Simply a phantom or spite-filled ghost, or perhaps a creature born of shadows that sought out new prey with the neon azure embers shining above its cruel, twisted scowl?

It didn't matter, he realized, watching the empty black barrel fall to obstruct his view of those nightmarish eyes. He closed his own eyes, and holding his breath, awaited the inevitable...

* * *

He sat up in bed with a start, sweat pouring off his body as it was wracked with an overflow of horror and pain and irrefutable guilt. It burned inside him, seemed to scorch every part of his soul until his own eyes welled with the threat of tears. Unable to endure it, his mouth parted in preparation for some kind of animalistic cry when, just as suddenly as the feelings had come upon him, they were gone. The memory of how it felt faded quickly as well, until he scoffed at himself for getting so riled up over something so meaningless as a dream. He couldn't understand at all what had caused such a violent reaction.

Turning to the clock next to his bed, he saw that he still had two hours left before he needed to be up. Sleep felt beyond his reach now, and he knew he wouldn't be hungry until it was time to eat. Instead of settling back into the now clammy sheets for a hundred and twenty minutes of staring into darkness, he climbed to his feet, stretched his muscles and wandered over to the window.

Below cars sped along the black paved streets, and neon-lit buildings towered over the masses, standing in bitter defiance of the sky. It was brilliant, electric with a life of its own, a gorgeously unique unification of the common. Yet, beneath the artificial glow cast into the night sky where countless numbers of people struggled to tell their own tales, he knew he was different from all of them, an individual in ways that they might never be. It was a strange kind of hope, or comfort, a feeling that seemed to trickle through the cracks of some invisible wall. It was only in the earliest or latest hours that he could feel any sort of self-satisfaction, even when pain and remorse had been stripped away. As the vivid lights died away, burned into oblivion by the rising sun, these feelings began to fall away from him as well, and for a brief second, for just the tiniest moment, he felt a lament for the loss of the night which he thrived on, before he once again knew nothing more of the enigma called emotions.

Traveling to the compound always began in the same way: a car would arrive with yet another faceless driver sitting behind a dark screen partition, stopping directly outside of his home. The morning would then proceed in the usual fashion of a silent and smooth drive; not even an uneven road surface could disturb the blandness. He stared out of the window at the traffic they passed, no match for the dark company car with the excessively powerful engine. They cruised past the brightly coloured inferior machines like a huge scurrying beetle, its black shell shining in the sun like spilt oil.

Although the day may have begun in the same fashion as most, at the entrance of the familiar building he was heading to, the comparisons would end. Today something more out of the ordinary was happening. He was rarely invited into the laboratories in the deep underground warren of the facility. The reason he had been given was, the doctors were afraid that something might trigger some unpleasant memories. He had not ventured to tell them yet that he was managing to find plenty of unpleasant memories on his own.

In stark contrast to the bustling city, the compound seemed a place of death for all its sterility and bland cleanliness. It stood imposingly, towering over the heads of those on the ground below. It had been designed to look like an old country estate with a carved plaque above the door displaying its name 'Esthar Cybernetics Corporation'. Built from strong grey stone of the surrounding area, it had scarred its way onto the sounding green countryside. A large electric fence ran the perimeter, complete with barbed wire on the top. It was unclear whether this was to keep people in or out. Trees had been cut down to make room for the car park, as if nature also had to keep its distance beyond the fence. Behind it, expensive cars showed the wealth of the company, regimentally lined up. There was nothing natural here.

But that was all the public ever saw. The admin staff also only knew this part of the building. The real compound ran deep underground and was protected by armed personnel. Very few people went below the ground floor, including Squall. But today was different.

The main building, which he was most familiar with, was for admin and for the information department. The lower levels were divided into two sides, one for actual surgical procedures, and one for the research lab in which tests were run and procedures were observed. Stepping into the lift he used his ID to reach the lowest floor and found himself remerging into a bright white corridor. The research lab to which he had been summoned was just beyond this corridor behind the main doors.

As he walked he could hear the incessant whirring of a ventilation machine, blowing stale cold air over his head. Sometimes he marveled at the complexity of such a seemingly simple thing as this machine. It wouldn't know, couldn't know what an important job it was doing, keeping them all alive in this tomb underground. _It was only a machine. _

He nodded at the man waiting for him and stared through the large glass window into the lab. The tiles on the walls were gleaming white and reflecting the harsh lights back towards the centre of the room. Within its confines were a number of people, none of them there by accident.

The shoes on the feet of the white coated doctors made almost no noise on the polished floors, almost gliding back and forth with light steps. These people didn't need to make noise to show their importance. They were the most medically qualified men and women in the country. They moved with self-assurance and a confidence in their work that was clear to every observer. With their heads held high not a single worry showed itself on their faces. So comfortable amongst their complex world of science and human anatomy that they barely needed to speak. Almost as if they could read each other's minds, they passed surgical instruments to one another without pause.

He stood next to a shorter, dark-haired man also in a white coat and glasses, staring through the window where a procedure was taking place. It was the first time that they had been here together since he'd been the one passed out on that cold steel table.

A man he'd never seen before laid there now, his chest opened and exposed to the outside. On a nearby table several carefully constructed limbs were laid out. A few of them already fitted with the narrow tubes that would serve as blood vessels and wires so thin that they were almost impossible to see to become nerve pathways.

Pieces of a rib cage made in a milky white, space age plastic was laid alongside them. The collection looked like a wreckage of a car crash, which had been wiped clean of all blood. Morbidly placed on display in a museum of human suffering.

The man's head had been shaved for better access to the brain. Along the right side of his scalp ran a thin red line, from where a scalpel had sliced through the skin. Squall knew that the scar would fade in time, just like ones that adorned his own body. Unconsciously he traced a scar on the back of his right hand, feeling its raised surface under his cold fingers.

They had covered him with a white sheet, pulled down to the waist. As if everything had been done to strip this man of his identity, he had even been stripped of his dignity. His left arm had been removed, severed from the elbow down. Either from accident or design, Squall couldn't tell. All he knew was that the man would soon awake to find a new limb attached to his adapted body; the realistic flesh on top of it always cooler than the rest of him.

He watched the scene with a critical eye, his eyes flicking to the machines monitoring signs of life on the young man. They bleeped every few minutes as the statistics changed. The white clad bodies swarmed around the patient, speaking to one another behind surgical masks. Of their faces, all he could see were hard eyes, focused and concentrating. The people inside had completely forgotten that anything existed outside of this room, so consumed by what they were achieving. They would work until exhaustion won through, and then they would be replaced by a new team.

He caught sight of his own refection in the glass and looked away. Sometimes the differences between himself and others reflected back only too clearly. His frame and his build neither average, nothing like the man beside him. Nothing about his reflection was soft, but angular and sharp. Even down to his hands, were his knuckles seemed to want to slice through their skin coverings and the veins were raised up in rivers of darkish blue. If he pulled up his sleeve he'd see them snaking their way up his arm back to the heart, straining against muscle, built up from years of lifting weights.

"As you can see, all goes well here," the man next to him reported. "In a few months' time you may very well have a partner."

"I don't need one. I'm perfectly capable on my own, Cid."

The older man chuckled slightly. "I'm well aware. I did design your mechanics after all. But you'll have to get used to the idea that there will be others like you, Squall. This is the future of humanity, you know. All my research will pay off someday, and this procedure will become commonplace. In the mean time, we need money to fund the project..."

"Another mission?" Squall wondered aloud. "Or were you hoping to set up some kind of charity event this time?"

Cid shook his head. "Watch your tone boy."

"Yes sir," Squall replied immediately without any thought to fuel the reaction.

Cid had one of those kindly faces, clean-shaven and creased around the eyes from years of smiling. Plump from having a comfortable life. It was the kind of face that inspired trust in most. For Squall it only reminded him that he would never have a comfortable life. That would never be his future. The smooth skin on his own face would never lose its youthful colour, nor would it crinkle and betray a lifetime of emotions.

"I don't like to use the product of my successful research for money-making purposes, however... It cannot be helped, as you're aware. It's costing an awful lot of money to fund this project. We're attempting a different method of integrating the artificial nerve pathways to the brain without resulting in damage to the hippocampus or other sections of the brain." Cid sighed deeply. "With more research, perhaps we can reverse the damage all ready done to you."

"It's not necessary. Now, about this mission?"

"Ah, of course. It's really quite simple, should be no problem for you. The President of Galbadia has requested a bodyguard for his daughter, who seems to be on someone's hit list now. All you have to do is stick close to her and keep her from harm until the government investigators can find the culprits."

_A baby-sitting job?_

"I know this probably seems like some kind of baby-sitting job to you, but it's a high-paying position, and should be relatively easy for someone of your considerable skills. Besides," Cid paused and chuckled slightly, jabbing the taller young man with his elbow, "I hear Ms. Heartilly is a good-looking young lady."

"The President of Galbadia's name is Caraway," Squall stated, ignoring Cid's more light-hearted remark.

_What do I look like, some hormone driven teenager?_

"Well, it seems she and her father don't quite get along... She's taken on her mother's last name instead. Now, you are to board a plane to Deling City in two hours' time. From Deling City International Airport, you will be driven by Caraway's personal chauffer to his mansion where you'll receive further orders. You leave here immediately. Understood?"

"Yes sir. I'll do my best."

"Good, dismissed. The car is waiting for you out front, as usual."

With a nod in response, Squall left the older man's side and followed the twisting corridors he'd come to know so well until he passed out through the sliding glass door. Outside, fresh green shrubs lined the side of the building, and carved stone benches were set next to the entrance, surrounded by small plots of flowers. It seemed terribly cheerful for a place so quiet and forlorn and void of real life on the inside.

As he followed the sidewalk out to the parking lot, he felt eyes upon him and immediately turned toward the source. Through one of the windows in a building that even he was restricted from, a blonde haired woman gazed down at him. A sorrowful kind of longing painting her features as she looked at him with some kind of desperate hope that he would come and ease whatever aching she expressed in her eyes. He promptly turned away. He had no time for a stalker's admiration when there was a mission at hand.

At the window several stories above, she removed the glasses from her face and rubbed the bridge of her nose as if to fight off some non-existent headache before peeking through her lashes again at the man below and pressing her hand to the icy glass.

"Of course you'd turn away," she murmured, not surprised or angry, only wistful in her tone. "I know everything about you... and you don't even know I exist."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Ok, here's the next chapter. I've been working hard on it, so I hope you like. Thank you to _Carie Valentine_ for the help and or asking a lot of questions and getting my mind working. And of course thank you to _Dark Raion_ who owns a good portion of this chapter also.

**Chapter Two -- '_The Test'_**

There was a hint of red in the long blonde hair that fell across the face of Quistis Trepe; its long soft strands blurring the information on the screen. She pushed it back with a firm hand and clipped it into place with a plain black slide, slotting it behind her ear. Her task did not require her to be beautiful and so tantalisingly fragrant locks must be sacrificed. Her face was pale under the glare of so many flickering computer screens, each refreshing at different rates. The dull light seemed to be sucking away the remaining colour in the room by illuminating everything in a flickering blue tinge.

Some screens were old, covered in dust and neglected. Large and cumbersome, they took up space on the desk. Heavy to move and with grimy fans whirring away inside, they filled the air with a dreary sound of air spinning. Doomed to work until their cores burnt out and they were replaced by one of their equally hard working neighbours. In the eventual shuffle of technology, the oldest screens were demoted to make way for the new and shiny flat screens.

The words on the screen changed rapidly, too fast for the human eye to decipher. Jumbled words had no correlation and made little sense to anyone but Quistis. She looked from one screen to another, pulling information from one and ordering it with some from another. The computers were effectively one artificial brain, each screen showing a different level of consciousness. To see what Quistis was seeing one would need to see the man, listen to him telling you what he was thinking. Quistis didn't need to see him to know what he was thinking or doing, the code running across the screen told her everything she needed to know about Squall.

She rubbed at her blue eyes, feeling the skin underneath them puffy from lack of sleep. Once she would have covered the dark circles underneath, but she had since learned that no one noticed either way. They never looked at her; their eyes would stray past her, to the screens and to her notes.

Equally neglected were her nails. Society would expect a woman of twenty-one and counting, to take some care. The norm might be long manicured nails; perhaps she worked in an office, taking calls, tapping on a keyboard, being careful not to chip the polish. Maybe she made coffee, went out with her colleagues on a Friday night, fancied the boss, or the man that came to change the water in the cooler… but Quistis Trepe was not a normal girl.

* * *

The airport seemed unusually crowded that afternoon, mostly it seemed, with people that had nothing better to do than loiter. Walking briskly through the throng of unfamiliar faces he spotted more than a few shady characters that appeared to be eyeing him and the carry-on sized suitcase he brought with him. He thought nothing of it. Their eyes flicked furtively from Squall to his bag, wondering if they could relieve him of it. It wasn't uncommon, of course, for pickpockets to be one of those loitering. Hoping to prey on frustrated and weary travellers.

At the gateway he briefly flashed his Esthar Cybernetics Corporation ID without bothering to slow down. By now it was merely for show, as he had flown with Esthar Airlines enough that most of the staff recognized his face.

His flight was on one of the more prestigious planes, which were reserved for government affiliates and upper crust civilians, so it was also not a surprise to see that he'd be flying with a Galbadian diplomat. As soon as the diplomats face had sparked recognition, Squall had triggered his memory chip, sifting through ID files in milliseconds. However there was no answer for why the man might be returning home, leaving Squall to form is own speculations.

Was he called back to his own country because of the threats made on the life of President Caraway's daughter? That would indicate that Galbadia suspected international terrorism and feared an attack or similar threat on their people in other countries. Or was it just Esthar?

_It's not my place to wonder... I just have to do my job to the best of my ability. And that means being up to par on my Galbadian. I guess now is as good a time as any to finish that final lesson._

Squall opened his suitcase once he'd settled into his seat and took out a much smaller silver case, flipping it open. On the inside was a small rectangular device with a few buttons on the bottom and a screen at the top. He lifted it carefully from its cradle and caught the thin cord that dangled from it. Brushing back his hair from the back of his neck, he inserted the connector at the end of the cord into a small port in his skin. Leaning back into his seat, he closed his eyes.

_Select: Galbadian language advanced lesson fifty-six, upload..._

After two minutes, the plane had lifted into the air, and Squall had finally mastered the Galbadian language, enabling him to speak it fluently. Having information directly uploaded into his brain did have its advantages... and an equal amount of drawbacks. What was he supposed to do now?

_Well, I guess doing a bit of investigation to learn more about the potential enemy could be beneficial to the mission... Even if it's not technically part of the mission._

Closing his eyes once more, for no real purpose other than to shut out the world around him, he mentally instructed the device he was linked to.

_Search news articles related to threats on President Caraway's daughter._

As a seemingly infinite list of matches popped into his vision, the sound of a gun being cocked reached his ears, followed shortly by a startled shriek. The images and articles immediately disappeared and he quickly regained his vision to see a man in a pressed business suit standing over the Galbadian diplomat he'd spotted before.

_A hijacking?_ _Perhaps Galbadia had had a good reason to remove the Diplomat from Esthar after all, but they hadn't been quick enough._

Looking around he could see four men guarding the aisle of the plane, each armed and watching carefully for any sign of danger. If he moved now, he'd do nothing but cause a mess. He leaned back in his seat and exhaled, closing his eyes in such a way he seemed almost distraught by the situation to anyone passing by. Switching back to the information running through the wire in the back of his head, he began fishing through the information back in the control tower of the airport and the aeroplanes black-box.

In his mind's eye he could see page after page of code from the plane's computer system, including a rather sloppy hack job that seemed to have come from the cockpit itself not five minutes earlier. In the information came fast and easy, as if someone had cut a path through it second before him. The security around the system was a push-over, and he easily connected to it and pried it apart himself, forcing the main power off. The back-up generators kicked in, but the lights blinked off, an unnecessary waste of now limited and precious energy.

A questioning murmur rolled through the cabin, and the assailants looked more than a little ill at ease. While the leader of the group, the one that had the diplomat by gunpoint rapidly talked into a communication device, Squall stood, eyes alight and fully functional in the near-pitch darkness and crushed the windpipe of the man nearest him with his hand, the other sliding the gun away in a fluid motion. The sickening crack of shattered bones and broken flesh caught the attention of the man standing in the aisle a few feet away. They weren't too smart, stretching themselves into a narrow single file formation.

The next attacker wheeled around, gun drawn, and was met by a switchblade in his neck. The body, which still barrelled down upon him carried by its own momentum, was thrown into the next guy in line, and two shots finished both off at once.

Before he could so much as flinch, the leader found the arm wielding his weapon being crushed by an iron grip before his life, too, was cut short by a knife through the heart. The darkness had gone completely quiet, no one willing to so much as whisper for fear of catching the attention of the glowing eyed man that stood, nonchalantly covered in the blood of four men. The leader's comm. device crackled to life, and through an ocean of roiling static, he could make out the voice of someone asking 'Is... all right? The... got hacked... trouble flying.'

Squall swiped the device up and spoke into it.

"No, I've had some problems out here as well. I could use back up if you can give it."

"Not a problem. The pilots' are all too willing to help steer when you're pointing a gun at their head..."

* * *

She flinched at the sight of more blood splattering the plane interior on the screen, and her heart made a suicide dive for her stomach. Beginning white and fading through a depressing scale of red, yellow, blue as it cooled on the infrared camera. The old man must've sensed her unease, because he chuckled a bit and nodded to the small TV sitting before them.

"He's good, like I told you. In fact, even better than I might've thought."

"He's ruthless," she murmured. "And far too powerful. Such a man... not even a man, a thing like that... shouldn't exist."

"Awfully harsh words from someone like you, Princess."

She scowled at the name, and his hand landed heavily upon her shoulder.

"Perhaps that's true, but, if this test of mine proves anything," he grinned just a bit, "he'll make the perfect body guard for you."

She wondered how this machine of a man would react when he discovered he had been tested; his obvious strength and ability doubted by a lesser man he could easily crush. She shuddered at the paused image on the screen, blood splattered across the camera lens obscuring the view like a hand blocking out the light. Rinoa Heartilly studied the face of a killer, who would soon become close enough to touch. Her body reacted to this in a primeval manner, by raising the hairs on her arms into goosebumps.

His face was cold and smooth, as if carved and created by an artist rather than nature. Across his right cheek was a river of blood that belonged to one of the murdered men. He paid it no attention and resisted the urge of wiping it away, making Rinoa wonder whether he could even feel its intimate presence. She touched her own cheek, sliding her hand down its unblemished surface as if feeling the blood on her own face.

His eyes were like steel with a splash of blue and equally as cold. She shivered at the thought of that piercing gaze touching her skin. She felt as if someone had thrown a bucket of ice-cold water over her arms and down her spine and had left her to dry out in the rain. Wrapping her arms around herself, she held on tightly and tried to drag her eyes away from the screen.

Rinoa didn't want to imagine how much money had been spent putting that little event together, or how many bribes and backhanders had crossed into crooked sleazy hands. Her father no doubt the architect, taking his due, and paying his way clear. She was never surprised at the greed of humans, and their blinded willingness to look the other way while a tragedy occurred. She had been brought up in a harsh world, with no room for dreams about the kindness of strangers. She trusted few, and it was lonely.

The men that had died would not have been prepared for such a violent death to meet them. Most likely they were crooks, hustlers, occasionally murderers in their own right, living in the dark and decrepit corners of society, where to make money was to take a chance. They had taken a chance today, and had their luck reached its end.

Looking across at her father, his broad shoulders flexed back proudly. His chest was puffed up with confidence and his stance told her that he was steadily denying the spread of grey hairs creeping across his dark head. He was laughing down the phone, a deep chuckle of supreme self-assurance, which could never be shaken by a few dead men in an aeroplane. Rinoa clenched her fists, and pressed her fingernails hard into the softness of the palms of her hands. She wished desperately that she had the courage to walk away from this man, but she was trapped, just like her mother had been before her.

"He will not arrive for another eight hours," her father said, turning to face her in a slow lazy movement, as if the person on the phone was far more deserving of his notice.

Rinoa didn't miss the quick sweep his eyes made over her person, and she turned her back on him for the sanctuary of fresh air. She often wondered if she displeased him, too much alike to her mother, and yet with a wilder defiance of his authority. She was keenly aware of how she must remind him of the woman he had lost, and how much pain she must give him when she refused to call him father.

But he had hurt her in past, in ways she could never forgive. When she would have clung to him, he had pushed her aside. Something was always more important, more pressing, he turned his face away from her tears and never heard her sobbing in her bedroom at night. As a child he had seen her stamping her foot in frustrated anger, at his coldness towards the memory of her dead mother. He had turned to her and called her a word she could never forgive him for. He had called her disappointing.


End file.
